Calvin's owner Jonne Aleeson is a native of Philadelphia. Calvin's is back, the Philly Cheesesteak place on The Alameda and named after Aleeson's son. It will open on his son's birthday, Dec. 6th. Photographed on Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2007. (Karen T. Borchers/Mercury News)

The thing about a hot, gooey sandwich from Calvin’s World Famous South Philly Cheesesteaks & Hoagies was that once you ate one, you never forgot it.

You never forgot the fluffy roll. The beef sliced paper thin. The melted cheese. But more than anything else, the thing you never forgot was the man with the hundred-watt smile who put his pride, his self and his soul into it for you.

Jonne Aleeson, a man who everyone called Calvin, died of an apparent heart attack last week; and he took a vibrant slice of San Jose with him. For when Aleeson fed you, he fed all of you — your stomach, your spirit, your sense of humor, your inner joy, your need to connect with those around you.

“I just think he was one of those shooting stars,” says Peggy Gale, a lawyer whose upstairs office is next door to Calvin’s on The Alameda. “He was fast and full of life. He loved life. He loved people.”

And he loved Philadelphia, his hometown. Everything Philadelphia. The Phillies, the Eagles, the Flyers.

“No matter what the sport is, if that’s where they’re from, that’s the team he’s rooting for,” says his son, Calvin Simmons. Yes, Aleeson named the restaurant and another on San Carlos Street after his son. Simmons was in town from Philadelphia making funeral arrangements and collecting himself after the suddenness of his father’s death. Aleeson was found dead at home last Sunday.

It’s hard to imagine. Few seemed more alive, more resilient, more able to tackle whatever life threw at him. Aleeson moved to San Jose in 1973. He tried his hand at a number of businesses — service stations, a jazz club, laundromats. He even had an idea for a laundromat/restaurant combo.

“He said, ‘I’m going to be the first one, son,’ ” Simmons, 47, says. —‰’You can do your laundry and eat at the same time.’ He had some dreams. He definitely had some dreams.”

And in cheesesteak, he found his calling. Aleeson opened his first restaurant in Mountain View in 1981. He moved to San Jose and Santa Clara and back to San Jose in pursuit of decent rent and a customer base. After a cheesesteak hiatus, he brought Calvin’s back to The Alameda in 2008 in a comeback worthy of Rocky Balboa. The heavenly sandwiches were back. The lunchtime line went out the door.

In July, a fire broke out in the building that houses Calvin’s, closing the restaurant. Aleeson was undaunted. He planned to reopen the restaurant on The Alameda and another at Midtown San Jose.

“Nothing was impossible to him,” says Gale. “He believed that it was all in God’s hands.”

Gale was not only a friend of Aleeson’s but also a guinea pig. The man left nothing to chance when it came to feeding his fans. When he considered introducing something new, he’d run it by Gale.

“Tastykakes, whatever soda pop just came in from Philadelphia, whatever cheese he had, he’d come running up the stairs, ‘Try this,’ ” she said. “It didn’t matter who was here, what client.”

Aleeson took his food seriously. He imported sandwich makings from Philadelphia, traveling east frequently to shop at the Italian market in south Philly. He didn’t want customers to tell him what ingredients they did not want on their sandwiches, only what they did want, and he printed a warning about ordering on his menu. Some additions — ketchup, mustard — were simply out of the question.

“Everybody says the same thing: ‘He reminds me of the Soup Nazi,'” Simmons says, referring to the “Seinfeld” character who enforced strict ordering rules at his soup stand. “He had a belief that ‘You don’t know what you want. I know what you want. Let me get it.’ “

Most customers, and there were thousands of them, knew it was Aleeson’s way of saying that he loved them. And they loved him back.

They will be hungry now.

Simmons says he and his brother and sister will carry on. They are planning an Oct. 15 grand opening for the San Carlos Street restaurant. They hope to one day reopen the shop on The Alameda, too.

For now, though, they are focused on mourning and preparing the Monday memorial for a man they know as father — and the man the rest of us know as San Jose’s Philly cheesesteak king.

Born: Aug. 31, 1943 in PhiladelphiaDied: Sept. 19, 2010 in San JoseServices: A viewing will be held from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m., Monday at the Maranatha Christian Center, 1811 S. Seventh St., San Jose. A funeral will follow. Survived by: Brother, Leroy Simmons Jr., of Philadelphia; children, Calvin and Yolanda Simmons, of Philadelphia, and Jamal Longstreth, of Ripon; 10 grandchildren, two great-grandchildren and a host of nieces and nephews.

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